Mexico & Nafta - October 2006 (ISSN 1741-444X)

The deputy interior minister, Arturo Chávez , said on 27 September that the government was "contemplating" the use of force to end four months of unrest in Oaxaca. The use of force to settle the crisis in Oaxaca would mean that the authorities would be taking two major risks. The first is that they could restore order without too much bloodshed. The second is that they could refute the allegations from the Left that the federal authorities were acting not on principle, but from low political calculation. The Left believes that the federal government, run by the Partido Acción Nacional, is selling its support to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which in name at least runs Oaxaca, in return for the promise of PRI votes in the federal congress. 

There are three pieces of evidence for such a deal. The first is that the PRI in the senate tabled a motion to withdraw a motion passed by the old senate (then dominated by the PRI) which called for the resignation of the (PRI) governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz. The Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), which broadly supports the protesters in Oaxaca, argues that the incoming senate cannot just abandon motions passed by the preceding senate. 

The second piece of evidence was a call from the PRI's Comité Ejecutivo Nacional on 21 September for the federal government to send "public security services" to support the government of Oaxaca and to restore law and order in the capital. The third piece of evidence is the support that 11 of the PRI's 17 governors showed for Ruiz at a reception in the presidential residence, Los Pinos, on 25 September.

Doubts about how effectively the federal government would deploy its forces are well founded. The feds did use force twice earlier in the year to end protests. The problem is that its application was so clumsy that the protests took on a new justification. The protests in Oaxaca are of a different order, so any confrontation with the feds is likely to produce a high death toll. Given that there are important elections in Tabasco on 15 October, Chávez is probably temporising rather than issuing a final warning.

Oaxaca has been seething with unrest for the past four months. The core of the protest was a strike by teachers for higher pay. The teachers were called out by Elba Esther Gordillo, a dissident leader (now expelled) from the PRI, who runs the teachers' union and has a feud with the (PRI) governor, Ruiz. The teachers' strike was then broadened out into the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO). The APPO has now taken over the centre of the city, radio and TV stations and brought the state government to a virtual halt. The APPO has beaten off attempts by the state authorities to force its members out of the city. The APPO says that only the resignation of Ruiz will end its protests and allow all of the state's 14,000 schools to reopen.

The state government's inability to deal with the protests and the federal government's failure to broker a compromise after six rounds of negotiations means that the APPO has grown stronger. It has (literally) fortified its position in the colonial centre of Oaxaca and effectively holds 2,000 Oaqueños hostage.

Calderón senses that the situation in Oaxaca is dangerous. His idea is to try and find some middle ground between the APPO and the state government. He has summoned a former governor, businessmen and state deputies for consultations about finding a way out of the impasse. This will be a first test of his administrative style, which he calls "inclusive."

Businessmen in Oaxaca, however, are running out of patience. Tourists, who used to visit Oaxaca in large numbers, have been scared away. On 28 September, businesses in Oaxaca held a one-day shutdown to back their demand for an end to the crisis. The strike was not well supported: businessmen said that this was because some of their colleagues had been intimidated by the APPO into remaining open. Eduardo Garcí­a, president of the Oaxaca state Cámara Nacional de Comercio said that out of 85,000 businesses, only about 10,000 had shut. 

The PRD, which can claim to be the biggest party in the state (after winning 42% of the votes in Oaxaca in the congressional elections on 2 July) and is still sore at the defeat of its presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the presidential election, claims that the stand-off in Oaxaca is the result of a deal between the PRI and Calderón. The PRD argues that the federal government is not prepared to take the obvious way out of the crisis and ask Ruiz to resign, because to do so would be to antagonise the bulk of the PRI. The PRI governors are likely to have a major influence on the party's 105 deputies in the federal congress who can give the government a majority or defeat it. It is unlikely that there is a deal between the PRI and Calderón because Gordillo is a key supporter of Calderón's. She wants Ruiz out and humiliated.

The federal government's interventions earlier this year, first to end a strike at a steel plant in Michoacán and then to deal with a parochial problem (between flower sellers) at Atenco, in the Estado de México, left three people dead. Just as serious for authorities were widespread and well-substantiated accusations that the feds involved in the Atenco operation raped at least seven of the female protesters they had arrested.

Shootout: On 24 September there was a shoot-out in the centre of the city. Members of the APPO were waiting to protest against the state governor, Ulises Ruiz, who was apparently visiting the Hotel Camino Real. Before he arrived, a couple of pick-ups full of (state) police zoomed down the street and started firing at the APPO picketeers who fired back. At least one person on each side was wounded. The shoot-out followed an attempt by the APPO to storm the Teatro Juárez earlier in the morning of 24 September. The APPO was beaten back. 

Tabasco: Elections in Tabasco tend to have national implications. The gubernatorial election on 15 October is no exception: it will decide whether Andrés Manuel López Obrador's protests against his defeat in the presidential election on 2 July fizzle out or are rekindled. Unfortunately for López Obrador, the latest opinion poll by GEA-ISA shows his candidate César Raúl Ojeda Zubieta lagging 11 percentage points behind the candidate from the PRI, Andrés Rafael Granier Melo. The Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) candidate is almost 20 percentage points behind Ojeda. 

A defeat for López Obrador in his home state will knock the stuffing out of his already faltering protest campaign. A victory, however, will cause major problems for the incoming government. Tabasco elections invariably pose problems for new presidents. López Obrador lost a famous gubernatorial election in 1994 in which the winner, Roberto Madrazo, spent more than the US president spent in his election in 1992. 

President Ernesto Zedillo refused to recognise Madrazo's victory for three months and only did so when he needed the party's support to push through his post-devaluation measures. In 2000, the cheating was so outrageous that the federal authorities ordered the first ever re-run of a state election. Ojeda Zubieta claims that the cheating this time is equally outrageous: the state is run by the PRI.